Aino Seep was born in Tartu in 1925 to parents Daniel Seep and Linda Seep (née Klaos). She was one of two siblings. She attended primary and secondary schools in Tartu before enrolling in the Tartu School of Music (now, the Heino Eller Tartu…
The name Aino, meaning "the only one" in Finnish, was devised by Elias Lönnrot, who compiled, from surviving oral folk sources which he had collected, the Kalevala.